Category Archives: The Journey

I read somewhere that the world looks exactly the same whether the perceiver is coiffed in long hair or shaved to the scalp, whether clad in blue denims or a three-piece suit. I suspect that the creator of that remark was more optimistic than realistic. OR…

Perhaps I added the word, “looks” and changed the entire meaning.

So, what happens to the power of affirmation when changes in perception capture our attention?

A lack of consonance of the cognitive variety will be greater I think, for those who place a high value on rules and opinions than those for whom the question itself has greater attraction.

“Peel yourself an apple” my father would say in response to a “WHY” question as he handed me a pocket knife whose blade now appeared more graceful after 200 or so years of being sharpened on whet stones in the Broom family workshops.

On one such occasion he offered me a whetstone much older than the knife itself.

“Spend an hour” he once told me, “honing this blade and another hour paring the rind in one piece, then study the completed work (the rind, not the apple.) Then eat the leftover trash (the apple, not the rind.)” And then study the peel again.

I followed Father’s advice a few times before finally understanding the lesson. His somewhat Buddhist nature was saying to me ever so quietly that The Truth I sought was in the search itself.

Today, I wore the jacket to my subtly pinstriped DC suit; I wore it over tattered jeans with a dozen or so frayed rips and tears. Both garments gave me great comfort. Each garment was bought at Nordstrom’s San Diego, in 1983. I wore them today with pointy toed shoes discovered on that same shopping trip.